MovieChat Forums > Cobb (1994) Discussion > Al Stump has been totally discredited

Al Stump has been totally discredited


In addition to falsifying just about everything about his relationship with Cobb and about Cobb's behavior, Stump stole dozens of personal items from Cobb's home after his death and forged hundreds of letters and documents that he later sold at auction.

See this piece from the journal of the Society for American Baseball Research, the most prestigious and recognized association of baseball historians:

http://haulsofshame.com/Final%20SABR%20Article%20-%20as%20published_6744.pdf

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The sad thing is that this side of the story will never get made into a movie!

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I agree, it is despicable that no movie will ever be made to correct the lie that was this movie from start to finish and expose Al Stump for the fraud he was. Just as it's also despicable there will never be a movie that gives us the real Jim Garrison, who wasn't what Oliver Stone depicted in "JFK" by any stretch of the imagination. Hollywood has been responsible for some dishonorable tellings of history over the last several decades and this one ranks in the top five in light of what we now know about Al Stump. The real tragedy is that Stump was singlehandedly responsible for ruining Cobb's reputation in baseball history circles so that a man who should be as revered a figure as Babe Ruth is, is instead remembered for things that were untrue.

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** Just as it's also despicable there will never be a movie that gives us the real Jim Garrison, who wasn't what Oliver Stone depicted in "JFK" by any stretch of the imagination. Hollywood has been responsible for some dishonorable tellings of history over the last several decades **

"The last several decades" would have to mean almost 100 years.

The very first successful feature film, Birth of a Nation, was fictionalized to the point that the entire thrust of the story was racist.

Even in the era when parents could watch most American films with their children, many films fictionalized real events and angered those who had been involved in them even though the films were child-friendly. The 1951 classic film Fourteen Hours used, or, more accurately, misused a real event in 1938 in which the lives of midtown Manhattan pedestrians were put at risk. The screenwriter, director and movie studio executive Spyros Skouras fictionalized many parts of it, including the important issue of how the dangerous incident was resolved. It is very possible that the movie angered many people who had been directly affected by the actual incident in 1938.

Children could have been walking in midtown Manhattan very close to the scene of the potential disaster. Some people who were children in 1938 remain alive and talkative today. They might express some feelings about the fictionalized Fourteen Hours.

D. W. Griffith had a lot of success with Birth of a Nation several years before someone else made the first ever documentary film. If you account for documentaries, which are usually more successful on television than in theaters, we do indeed have several visual and sound bite experiences for young people in which they learn that Jim Garrison was a liar.

Other documentaries have pointed out that despite Garrison's fraud, many sane people including Chief Justice Earl Warren and Tom Wicker said the whole truth about the JFK assassination wasn't known yet to the public, therefore others who believe that are hardly nutty or paranoid.

If you say both Warren and Wicker said Oswald acted alone, no doubt about it, then you are the liar.

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I don't see how this movie ruined Cobbs reputation

Professionall he will always be remembered as 1 of the best players ever

Personally he was an asshat, EVERYBODY knew that

You don't have to stand tall, but you have to tand up!






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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFPzSB0pCZI&lc=z12sfhxotoadxngbj04cc1gh4zmxe3jhq2w.1448572519934825

Baseball wasn't integrated until the 40's, and that's when Cobb voiced his approval of the subject. And no matter WHEN he did it, the fact remains in 1908 he bought land and built a predominantly black subdivision, named it Booker T Washington Heights and sold the homes at low prices and financing.
In 1950 Cobb hired a black doctor to serve the black community of his hometown at the hospital he built in his hometown. And this was before desegregation.
In 1952, Cobb voiced approval of the Texas League integrating, and told the AP reporter that he was confident in the future all leagues would follow suit.
You apparently refuse to read anything that shows Cobb wasn't a racist, and probably never read anything that said he was, but just go by the urban legends that have been spread since Al Stump's "biography" published after Cobb's death with no basis in fact.
If articles written in the 10s and 20's won't serve as proof Cobb wasn't a racist, than how can stories from the same time period serve as proof that he was a "racist wife beater" ?

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TMC-4

Thanks for the info and post.

By sheer accident, I recently watched a tape on you tube of a 1955 I've Got a Secret show. Three old ballplayers appeared unidentified for the panel to guess who they were and what they had done. The two male panelists were blindfolded. The two women knew zilch about baseball so didn't even have to wear blindfolds. Cobb was the third.

He comes across as a kindly looking old guy of about 70 with a pleasant smile and very good manners. The panel came no where near guessing his secret (highest all-time batting average) and the men didn't recognize him when they pulled off their blindfolds. But they went nuts when Garry Moore told them his name. It is obvious his name was still very famous. Cobb shook hands with the panel on the way out. I noticed he shook hands with the two women before turning to the men.

Cobb being so different than his image led me to do a bit of instant research on you tube, and a speech by the author of a recent biography of Cobb who pointed out the facts above and that Cobb's reputation was destroyed after his death by Al Stump.

Led me to think a bit.

One---why would such a supposedly repulsive personality have gotten more votes from the baseball writers in 1936 for the initial Hall of Fame class than anyone, including very popular baseball icons like Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson? I would think they would want that honor to go to a guy they liked. They didn't have to give it to Cobb.

Two---Cobb had a very successful post-baseball life. He didn't live in the past, but was a shrewd businessman who was worth millions by his death. He got into the ground floor investing in General Motors in the horse and buggy era. But he seems to have lived quietly. Well, perhaps he was content to be able to travel about with folks not recognizing him by sight.

Three---I recall articles back in the fifties before he died, and they emphasized that Cobb was popular with fellow ballplayers because of his struggles to raise salaries.

Four---when asked in his later years, he said his favorite active ballplayer was Willie Mays.

Five---The author of the recent biography pointed out that while Cobb was from Georgia, his family had been abolitionists and had not supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. This seems to have been a sore point with some other Southerners when Cobb emerged as perhaps the most famous Southerner in the country during his baseball career.

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I'm a life long Tiger fan, and for the last couple decades I thought one of my childhood heroes was an odious racist. Now it sounds like this wasn't the case at all ! I'm rather stunned. I feel better, and I did read that Cobb was roundly disliked (but respected) by the League and teammates alike. I can't believe a fabricated book by a guy named Al Stump held such sway. I don't know what Cobb did to alienate his peers, but apparently he wasn't the creep he once was made out to be. Seriously, this seems like a crime, even beyond swiping personal items and selling them. Maybe everyone got enough of the movie cut (not much) that they let it go.

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